Christopher Tull

The Beginning of Time

I have often heard writers in the blogosphere extol the virtues of blogging and it usually goes something like this:

“Writing your ideas will help you get noticed!”

“Writing skills deteriorate quickly without practice!”

“Writing often will make you a better communicator!”

I suppose that I am convinced, because I have decided to use this blog to exercise my writing muscles. To begin with, I am going to post some relatively unoriginal content by summarizing some of the interesting academic papers that I have been reading. To be honest, the motivation is mostly selfish because it allows me to

practice writing in an informal and low pressure context

solidify my understanding of the academic content I am reading by attempting to explain it to others

Only time will tell how successful I am at these goals, seeing how my previous attempts at blogging failed miserably.

The first was a Blogger site call “Degenerate Matter” and I don’t think I even posted a single article. Mostly I just really liked that name because I was taking an astronomy class at the time and was I totally starstruck (pun intended) by the material. Side note: for those who don’t know, “degenerate matter” is what you call the matter in a neutron star after the force of gravity has overcome the repulsive force keeping electrons away from the protons in the atomic nucleus, thereby causing the atoms to collapse. The electrons then merge with the protons, forming a super dense material composed (almost?) entirely of neutrons, hence “neutron star”.

The second blogging experiment was when I left to study abroad in Germany. I created a travel blog to keep my friends and family up-to-date on my adventures. This one also had a witty name I think, but I am drawing a blank right now. Anyway, I posted a couple times and then decided it was too much work and let that slide also.

With that illustrious blogging history, I have decided to try again! We’ll see how it goes :)